Well-being is more dependent on the way you see things than most of us realize.  Being mindful instead of letting someone else’s labels define you, your health, your challenges, even your strengths can make a major difference in the quality of your life.

At the moment, I’m into Ellen Langer’s book Counterclockwise:  Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.  This isn’t a New Age exhortation to do affirmations and expect blessings.  Langer is a social psychologist who’s been researching the mind/body link scientifically for decades.  She and her students at Harvard have done study after study with amazing results about the power of little things that are conveyed in words. 

In the study for which the book was titled, they took groups of nursing home men on a weeklong retreat where they recreated the year 1959.  One group of men was treated as if it were that time.  The other was asked to reminisce about that year while the same music, movies, etc. played. 

Both groups came out of the experience with their hearing and memory improved.  On many measurable dimensions, they “got younger.”  Astounding results, to be sure.  But even more amazing, those who actually re-lived the year improved more than the others–on intelligence tests, posture, gait, height and weight.   Photos of them taken at the end of the week were judged by people unaware of the study to be younger than the ones taken at the beginning of the week. 

In Langer’s words, “It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us, but rather our mindset about our physical limits.”  What are you doing about that?  What are you thinking?

Henry Ford’s famous quote, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” is another way to consider this phenomenon.  We set ourselves up to succeed or stumble, sail through challenges or become chronically ill with what we tell ourselves.  That’s why some people can live through Dachau and some have a heart attack just dealing with traffic on Monday morning.

One of the places that has a lot of potential for a better life is how we perceive control.  Are you the only one who knows the right way to do things?  Does everyone else need your perspective to get things done?  That’s not reality, but some of us take on a lot of stress assuming that.

How about the opposite—where you assume you have no control?  If you tell yourself that someone else has to make you happy, improve your work situation, help you eat better, or make you lose weight, you’re eliminating the one person who can really make any of those things happen—YOU.

The truth is, you don’t have all the control and never will.  But you do have more than “none.”  All of us do.

Another perspective that works against our well-being is the idea that aging is linear and inevitable.  Once one piece of your body starts to have problems, the rest will follow.  The path is inalterable.  Studies support that people who see health problems as a temporary blip recover better than those who see their illness as the first step in the staircase down to total infirmity.

Even though social scientists confirm the importance of consciously choosing how we see the world and our place in it, it’s not that easy.  The vast majority of the images and ideas we hear, watch, and relate to are mind-numbing and contagious.  Each of us is different in many, many ways.  But it’s natural for a society to expect similarities.  You have to be your own watchdog on this.  Forgetting one person’s name doesn’t mean your memory is gone.  Many older people remember more than those two generations younger.  (My dad could still tell you the names of the guys he served with in WWII when he died in 2001.)

The mind-body link is a huge piece of good health.  Much of modern medicine ignores it. Society ignores it.  That doesn’t mean you have to.  Pay attention to what you are telling yourself all day every day.  Get rid of the junk that implies “less than,” “unable,” or “decline.”  It’s far worse for you than a greasy burger with fries and a giant milkshake. 

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more about her and her work, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com/.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com. 

This article originally appeared in the July 2010 issue of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter, Put Old on Hold.

Tags: Anti-aging strategies, Coping with change, dealing with healthcare, Health and Aging, living well as we age

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